Groups call for new 228, White Terror case probes

By Chris Wang / Staff reporter

Investigations into the 228 Massacre and White Terror cases should be relaunched because recent controversial comments about the massacre showed that some people are still trying to find excuses for the merciless killings and infringement of human rights, advocates said yesterday.

Independence groups yesterday lambasted Shih Hsin University professor Wang Hsiao-po (王曉波), who said that the killing of 20,000 people by Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) Nationalist Army in the 228 Massacre was “a small case” compared with the 400,000 killed during Chiang’s campaigns against the Chinese Communist Party in China.

“Making comparisons by numbers of death toll is a violation of the universal value that every life matters. If Wang is right, does it mean that what happened recently in Ukraine, where hundreds of people died in protests, was an even smaller case?” Wu Ching-chin (吳景欽), an associate professor of law at Aletheia University, told a press conference.

While victims and their families in the tragedy were compensated by the government decades later, Wu said the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration has refused to acknowledge its full responsibility in the massacre, which was why Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) would describe the brutal crackdown an “unintentional mistake.”

Lawyer Huang Di-ying (黃帝穎), a member of the Taiwan Forever Association, said comments that denied the existence of the Holocaust or helped conceal the massacre would be a violation of law in 11 European countries, including Germany and Austria.

Wang could sent to jail by saying what he said, if there were similar laws in Taiwan, Huang added.

As Wang also serves on the Ministry of Education’s history curriculum adjustment task force, which is trying to “de-Taiwanize” high-school textbooks, Northern Taiwan Society secretary-general Steve Wang (王思為) said pro-Taiwan groups had three recommendations.

“We call for abolishing the curriculum adjustment, and future adjustments would have to be screened and monitored by the Legislative Yuan,” Steve Wang said.

“Lastly, investigations into the 228 Massacre and other White Terror cases should be relaunched and those responsible identified,” he added.